I caught myself advising my friend on a matter the other day, saying, “Love her though, what a queen,” then corrected myself quickly, “I don’t love her. I don’t know her that well, but I like her.” She replied, “I don’t know whether to be offended or like, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’” It propelled into a lighthearted debate, mostly one-sided (on my part), about the semantics of “I love you” in this day and age.
I’ve never been too keen on exaggerating my emotions, and I make a conscious effort to say what I mean. This was all fine and good until the fifth grade when “ILY!,” short for “I love you,” took over pop culture lingo. You may not remember it as a distinct moment in time, but when I think about my irrational rage regarding this phrase, it dates back to around this period.
If you don’t remember “ily,” you might be more familiar with “ilysm” (I love you so much). Peak “ily” and “ilysm” seemed to appear in middle school for me. Comments sections, Snapchat stories and anonymous questions were filled with ily’s scattered throughout the masses. I can admit it, I participated.
These days, I don’t see too much “ily” culture. I do, however, see an abundance of “love you” placed in the wrong context. Even more so, our generation has taken a certain liking to the “I love her, but…” trope commonly used when gossiping, venting or advising, as I was doing with my friend. I’m not here to tell you how to emote, but I have a bone to pick with how we just toss around I love you in modern-day rhetoric.
It’s difficult to say when we decided as a society to validate our feelings by prefacing or following them up with something deemed nice; maybe it was around the time participation awards became popular. I find it all to be disingenuous. I’ve always aired on the side of bluntness because I’d rather say what I mean than make something up — that could just be the New Yorker in me, though. Those around me know I have no trouble speaking my mind, admittedly, sometimes to a fault. But it’s much more freeing to say what I mean without a qualifier. I can enjoy something and also have a critique of it. That is a truth. More often than not, we land somewhere in this middle ground, which can be uncomfortable for some.
Perhaps the pressure to follow up criticism with a meaningless compliment is a misguided reaction to our current culture of uplifting and empowering one another. I think we’ve got it all wrong. What is the point of an empowered mass if we’re telling each other falsehoods? To live a more fulfilled and positive life, I suggest we move toward expressing admiration in a candid manner, one that is not forced.
For example, I make a conscious effort to compliment strangers when applicable. I correct myself when I find words getting away from me and their true intention. Maybe I’m being a snob, but I believe that words hold significance, and that, at the end of the day, it’s not just semantics.
A columnist I follow recently wrote about what he calls moral courage: “acting in accord with one’s convictions despite a natural fear of retaliation or punishment.” He suggests that using moral courage is the “right way to say the unsayable” without alienating the people you love. Using this as a framework, I invite you to exercise moral courage by saying only that which you wholeheartedly believe. You might find you’re creating authentic relationships that go deeper than a meaningless “ily” and translate to a guttural, truly sappy “I love you.”
As I embark upon my senior year of college, a lot of lasts await me. It’s going to get very sentimental very quickly, I know this. I’ve decided to keep my I love you’s close to my chest, only pulling them out when I deem appropriate.